


These Violent Delights

by UniqueChimera



Category: Pocket Monsters | Pokemon - All Media Types, Pokemon Ranger
Genre: Character Death, Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-04-08
Updated: 2015-04-08
Packaged: 2018-03-21 22:11:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 394
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3706037
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/UniqueChimera/pseuds/UniqueChimera
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The gangs that have brought ruin to the world of Pokemon, viewed through a Ranger's eyes.</p>
            </blockquote>





	These Violent Delights

**Author's Note:**

> I don't think the Pokemon powers that be thought Pokemon Ranger was going to get a sequel when it was released, so the timelines of the first and second Ranger games often contradict each other. I've taken some liberties with the timeline to make the Ranger universe more cohesive and to better integrate the Ranger universe into the wider Pokemon world.
> 
> As always, constructive criticism is much appreciated. If you have any questions, please leave them in the comments and I'll be sure to look at them.
> 
> Title is from Romeo and Juliet.

There used to be trainers in Fiore.

Ishtar doesn’t remember them – she was a babe in arms at the time – but from Economics and History she knows that they were once the region’s lifeblood. Trainers flocked to Fiore both for its overwhelming natural bounty and its abundance of good training areas; more seasoned trainers often came to the region to whip their Pokemon into shape before challenging the Battle Frontier or the Pokemon League. 

Then Team Rocket showed up. Ishtar remembers that.

How could she not? She had only been five at the time, but it was impossible to forget the hordes of men in black that had pillaged her homeland and terrorized her people. It was impossible to forget the way her mother had trembled every time they ransacked her town.

Her brother, Anunn, had just gotten his PokeDex. He marched into City Hall, eyes ablaze, and challenged the first Rocket grunt he could find to a battle. 

He lost.

His only Pokemon, a Pachirisu, was barely breathing after the battle. It died in the Pokemon Center four days later. Anunn was cradling it in his arms, still in shock, when the grunt pulled out a revolver and shot once, twice, three times.

He was dead before he hit the ground.

After that, nobody dared defied Team Rocket. For Ishtar and her mother, life became a sour mixture of fear and sorrow.

Ishtar was nine when Team Rocket was finally banished from Fiore. The once-bountiful region had become barren; the risk of trainers capturing Pokemon and disrupting Fiore’s fragile ecosystem was too great. The region would become part of Almia and Oblivia’s Ranger Union until Fiore’s ecosystem was stable enough to reintroduce trainers. 

She joins the Ranger Corps because she never wants to have to see her loved ones die again. Pokeballs and battles remind her of Anunn; they are a symbol of the destruction that she wishes to prevent. But her Styler and the Plusle at her side are different. Where the trappings of trainers represent a blood-soaked past, they represent a future where little girls will never watch their brothers die. They are harbingers of harmony, not the conflict that is part and parcel of a trainer’s life.

Ishtar was named after a goddess of war. As a Ranger, she wants nothing more than to usher in an era of peace.


End file.
